Writing Assignment 1

PART I: JOURNAL ENTRY (20 points)

PROMPT: Overall, would you say you are highly satisfied, moderately satisfied, or
dissatisfied with your communication in interpersonal situations? Explain your
answer by describing your communicative behavior in a recent interpersonal
situation.

Overall, I feel moderately satisfied with my communication in interpersonal

situations. I am able to deliver when it comes to efficiently communicating with others, but
sometimes nerves and slight social anxiety do get the best of me. As embarrassing as it is, I
am the type of person who practices what they are going to say repeatedly before saying
something. Growing up, many of my friends and family would describe me as a
perfectionist. Mainly because I hate to fail and like things to go as planned, so when they
don’t it really discourages me. For example, presentations are always very nerve-racking to
me.
During the fall semester, I had my first ever presentation through Zoom. I was so
nervous and wanted everything to work and go smoothly. Before presentation days, I
always have a script that I write out in the presentation notes just in case I forget anything
in the moment. I then practice that presentation with and without the script a bunch of
times just to mentally make myself feel more prepared for the actual presentation day.
Finally, I will always test sharing my screen through Zoom to make sure that slides work
well and the audio plays if there is any. So, on the actual presentation day, after all that
preparation, it was finally my turn to present. I go to share my screen on Zoom and it won’t
allow me to click on my presentation and my screen just freezes! Even though it wasn’t my
fault that this happened, I hate to make people wait on me so I felt so embarrassed. But
eventually, I got everything working properly and began my presentation. Overall,
according to my friends in that class, I did great and hardly messed up, but to me, I felt like I
did so bad. I’m very self-critical so I tend to kill my own confidence and care too much
about what other people think, so this is definitely something I hope to work on and
eventually gain more self-confidence.